Why Is California Called California?

A 16th-century Spanish romance novel tells of an earthly paradise “on the right hand of the Indies,” with steep cliffs and rocky shores. On this island utopia, which like Atlantis and El Dorado is full of riches, “there was no metal but gold” and the rulers were all strong Black women.

The name of that fictional Eden was California.

The novel, “Las Sergas de Esplandián,” by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo and published around 1510, is believed to be the first time the word “California” appears in print, which is how I came across this old tale in my reporting.

The novel is believed to be where the state’s name came from, Alex Vassar, a spokesman for the California State Library, told me, though the matter isn’t entirely settled. Surprisingly little has been firmly established about the origin of a name known around the world.

“Numerous theories exist as to the origin and meaning of the word ‘California,’” reads a state legislative document from 2017. “All that is known for certain is that someone, presumably a Spanish navigator, applied the name to the territory that now comprises the State of California sometime before the year 1541,” when it first appeared on a map.

Some scholars have suggested that the name was derived from the Latin words calida fornax, meaning a hot furnace, or from a Native American phrase, kali forno, that means high hill or native land. But the most widely accepted theory is that de Montalvo’s book was so popular in the 1500s that Spanish adventurers in the New World would have known the legend of California.

So when the explorers Fortún Ximenez and Hernan Cortés sailed up the west side of Mexico, they apparently took the peninsula we now know as Baja California to be an island located exactly where de Montalvo’s book said “California” would be, east of Asia.